Andrew Cohen

Through
10 years at Momentum Worldwide and the rest of his career at Visa, Andrew Cohen
has worked on every domestic sports property of any stature. Yet, he says every
sponsorship pitch submitted to Visa’s U.S. headquarters in San Francisco gets
reviewed.

Andrew CohenVisa
USA

“As far as I know, we’ve never done a
sponsorship that came to us ‘over the transom,’” Cohen said, “but there’s an
obligation for us to see what’s out there and stay in touch with the market.”

Cohen runs Visa’s non-Olympic and non
FIFA-related sponsorships in the U.S., including the NFL, NASCAR and the
Kentucky Derby, along with entertainment properties such as Broadway shows, and
other music and film properties.

Age: 37

Title: Group director of partnership marketing

Company: Visa USA

Education: B.S., management, Cornell University, 1994

Family: Wife, Jessica; daughters Alex (3) and Izzy (10 months)

Career: Momentum Worldwide, working with AT&T, American Express and other accounts; joined Visa in 2004

Last vacation: Park City, Utah, last summer

Favorite books: "The Precious Present," by Spencer Johnson, and "The Alchemist," by Paulo Coelho

Favorite movie: "Goodfellas"

What’s on your iPod? Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, Coldplay

Pet peeve: Doing things for political reasons only

Greatest achievement: Id rather say my latest achievement, which is Visas underwriting of We Are the World.

Greatest disappointment: I havent learned to play the trumpet, and my wife gave me one when we got married five years ago.

Fantasy job: To be the trumpet player in the Dave Matthews Band

Executive you most admire: Steve Jobs, for his focus and commitment to innovation and design

Business advice: Anything worth doing operates on the razors edge of chaos.

That
kind of attention to detail, and Visa’s long-standing insistence on ROI
measures, now heightened by its two-year-old status as a publicly traded
company, are at the root of the success of Cohen, and Visa.

As a
TOP Olympic sponsor since 1986, “We’ve been focused on sponsorship returns for
some time, but now we’re turning the dial up,” Cohen said. “Post-recession, no
one is going to be able to get away without justifying and quantifying sponsorships;
before, some did.”

Cohen also rides herd on integrating
top-shelf experiences into Visa’s top-shelf Signature card. So at the most
recent Super Bowl, you might have found Signature cardholders on field at
halftime, watching The Who perform. At the NFL draft, cardholders can earn or
win the right to deliver a cap to players who are selected.

While acknowledging that no U.S.
property has the reach of the NFL, Cohen takes as much pride in fashioning a
promotion with Fandango, Broadway or Visa’s recent sponsorship of the “We Are
the World” renaissance as he does in creating one that tied Visa and GameStop
to the release of EA’s juggernaut Madden NFL video game.